“The Gates Foundation does wonderful work, but it’s only a portion of its many activities and functions…”Watch yesterday's news digest for various stories and some of the latest movements in the Gates Foundation and Bill Gates’ private investment firm. Also consider the previous post about head-changing at the Foundation. If you are a new reader and such power shifts mean very little to you, read this and this.

The Gates Foundation does wonderful work, but it’s only a portion of its many activities and functions, some of which include tax evasion, investment in questionable ventures and possibly the flirting with politicians’ ‘pet charities’, which buy political influence (think antitrust).

Gates Foundation’s Influence Criticized

The chief of malaria for the World Health Organization has complained that the growing dominance of malaria research by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation risks stifling a diversity of views among scientists and wiping out the world health agency’s policy-making function.

This leads to another news story. Jointly, the Gates Foundation and Microsoft work on strengthening the monopoly by handing out Vista-loaded PCs. Russian subsidies were mentioned just days ago and a new discussion about this revealed that the same thing is happening in Portugal.

In my country (Portugal) we have a very similar deal, available to all students and teachers in high school, which is subsidized by the cellphone/mobile ISP companies, the government and probably Microsoft, where you can get a laptop for 150 euros with a contract for 2 years for the mobile internet access with a nice discount from the usual monthly fees, from several well known laptop manufacturers (HP, Toshiba), and pretty decent machines also (Core Duo, 1 Gb RAM, the only downside is they all have integrated graphics cards), of course they all come with Windows Vista Home Premium as well.

Staff of the EPO is given yet more reasons to protest tomorrow at the British Consulate, for the so-called 'President' of the EPO reminds everyone of the very raison d'être for the protest -- a vain disregard for the rule of law

The European Patent Office (EPO) President, Benoît Battistelli, reportedly started threatening -- as before -- staff that decides to exercise the right to assemble and protest against abuses, including the abuses of President Battistelli himself

A protest in Munich in less than 6 days will target Mr. Sean Dennehey, who has helped Battistelli cover up his abuses and crush legitimate critics, whom he deemed illegal opposition as if the EPO is an authoritarian regime as opposed to a public service which taxpayers are reluctantly (but forcibly) funding